A global war begins in 1940. This war drags out over many decades until the remaining people have no recollection of who started it or why. Nothing is being manufactured any more and society has broken down into primitive localized communities. In 1966 a great plague wipes out most of those still left, but one day a strange aircraft lands at one of these communities and its pilot tells of an organisation which is rebuilding civilization. Immense reconstruction takes place over the next few decades and society is once again great and strong. In the year 2035, on the eve of man's first flight to the moon, an uprising against progress gains support and becomes violent, it would seem humanity is determined to take itself to the brink of destruction yet again, having re-built the tools to make its own demise possible.